🚀 go-pugleaf

In an article I posted recently to the Modula-2 newsgroup about free software
I mistakenly alluded to the Fitted Software Tools Modula-2 compiler as a free
software package.  The Modula-2 product is shareware, which implies that it 
is free software for a trial period after which a decision must be made by the
user of it to register it, if he or she finds it useful.

As far as I am concerned, the distinction between free software and shareware
is unfortunate.  Shareware DENOTES shared software.  If I purchase a loaf of
bread and am surrounded by hungry friends, I will share the bread with them.
They are under absolutely no obligation to pay me for the bread.  Shareware
CONNOTES shared software development costs.  The notion of sharing (as most
normal people understand it) is truly lost in the connotation of the word 
shareware.

Perhaps we ought to abandon the shareware terminology completely and follow
the idealogy of the GNU project run by Richard Stallman.  The software is freely
available and distributed (as is shareware) and contributions are optionally
made by the users who find the software useful and worthwhile (as stipulated
by all shareware).  The only difference between the idealogy of the GNU 
project and shareware is terminology: GNU is free software (read the license
agreement, if you doubt the credibility of the claim).

Thank you for reading.  Please direct FLAMES to me at one of my addresses
below and DISCUSSION to me or the newsgroup.

-- 

 George K. Thiruvathukal

 Illinois Institute of Technology         Argonne National Laboratory
 Chicago, IL 60616                        Argonne, IL 60439

 thssgkt@iitmax.iit.edu                   gkt@athens.ees.anl.gov
 thirgeo@iitvax.bitnet

 "The cause of all world problems: E = mc^2."